Escape From New York

PEOPLE started talking shit the day before the flight out to LA because Winter Storm Leon’s (no kidding) baby brother was about to hit us hard and there was no way we were going anywhere. Sometime around midnight, we got word all flights were being cancelled, including ours, so we unpacked, cancelled the dogsitter and hit up Sar and Damien to let them know they’d be going solo. Then it turned out there was one little flight left willing to brave ten inches of snow. So we packed again and lugged everything through the blizzard to JFK in hardcore snow gear only to land on a beach, in flip flops and shorts, in February. Wearing shorts and flip flops in February is kind of like being a dog in a handbag; you can feel yourself getting softer by the minute.

It must be catching, this Los Angeles disease. We could see the Jawamobile from our balcony. We had some fucking amazing pancakes. We did a little tour of the City of Angels. The mailboxes were dressed up like Spongebob. There was a line around the block for Shia LaBeouf’s idea of art, or maybe it was Jerry O’Connell’s idea of Shia’s idea of art. We were sucking up the Michelin starriness of it all, wandering around in a consumerist trance, until we went to pick up books. One box was still a box of books. The other one, which we took to calling Brokebook Mountain, was some recycling in an official USPS bag. So if anyone was wondering why we had maybe half our titles at the show, there ya go. Looking at you, Spongebob.

As for the show, the LA Zine Fest, it was fantastic. Maybe it was fitting that our big books didn’t make it, forcing us to go all mini all the time. In terms of volume, meaning the number of comics sold, the LA Zine Fest ate everything we could serve. Shorthanded on big ticket items, we couldn’t have broken any dollar records, but even in dollars, we came pretty close to our CAKE total in a single day. In case anyone’s wondering how seriously to take the LAZF as a comics publisher, we would say, “Very very.” The Helms Bakery garage is not your average parking facility. It’s huge and it was packed to the brim, with a kind of energy in line with the likes of CAB. Find a way to get there and go.

But enough business, our haul was pretty killer. As our pal, Nate Bulmer, pointed out, there were more than a few new faces and the familiar names included lots of folks you don’t see too often on our coast. Indie comics would seem to be a bigger deal on the right side of the USA, sure, but it can feel a little insular when you come up to someone’s table whom you just saw at another show two weeks ago and ask them if they have any new stuff, which they don’t because you just saw them two weeks ago, and you can’t ask how they’ve been because you just saw them two weeks ago. Sigh. We picked up great stuff from the new(ish)-to-us Nick Thorburn,Emily Joy, Kid Clampdown, Jason Martin (coming soon to our Emporium), Kevin Uehlein and Sandra Markarian, and from folks who are rarely in the room with us, like the debonair David King, the mysterious Malachi Ward (with a new comic!) and that bastard Tim Hensley. We even met Eric Nakamura the night before, which, for folks like us, is a real honor (plus he likes us!). It’s nice to get the hell out of town for a while.

Nicer still, we got to hang out with Damien Jay for an entire day. It was also his first stint behind a table in years, though he showed not a trace of rust at all, and even has a new mini anthology (also coming to the Emporium) of stuff he’s been up to while (still) working on the Natural World (and moving to LA, and buying a house, and having a baby…). He swears he is going to finish the Natural World. We believe him. Of course, Sar Shahar, one of our gang and favorite people was his usual lovely self, and we got to have dinner with him and Nate and their lovelier boos, while they pitched Lesbocop on our way to catch Robocop. So Hollywood. And Robocop was wack. Should they invite us, we’ll be back at the LAZF every year until we are dead.

Then the flight home got bumped a couple days, so we went to Palm Springs and played mini-golf and had drinks on a freezing mountain top to cool off. If you’re hating us right now, don’t worry, we’re back in New York, enjoying a nice day before we re-enter the polar vortex. The next party is at our house (meaning Bergen Street Comics), for Mike Dawson‘s new book, Angie Bongiolatti, and you’re invited to yet another party for Edie Fake‘s new book, Memory Palaces at the Bureau of General Services Queer Divsion. Say that three times fast. Now you are queer, too.

We’ll be back with the details of the parties and the rest of the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Fetival 2014 related activities – including one thing you are not going to believe until you see it, when you will shit brix. That’s a promise.